Toronto Hydro-Electric System Limited has announced its initial lineup of 2011 conservation and demand management CDM programs targeted to Toronto residential and commercial customers.
A wide-range of programs will be launched in March that have been designed to encourage customers to invest in conservation measures, which in turn will help customers save on their electricity bills, reduce Toronto Hydro's peak electricity demand and help the environment.
"With electricity costs on the rise, it's more important than ever to provide customers with the right tools to take control of their bills," says Chris Tyrrell, Vice-President, Customer Care and Chief Conservation Officer.
The 'saveONenergy' CDM programs will help Toronto Hydro meet its obligation to the Ontario Energy Board to reduce summer peak demand in Toronto by 286 megawatts MW and reduce consumption by 1,304 gigawatt-hours GWH by the end of 2014.
Below are highlights of the programs now available.
"Toronto Hydro is pleased to offer customers this roster of conservation programs that are both simple and effective, and will help improve the environment."
PROGRAMS FOR RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMERS:
Coupons: In March, homes across Toronto will receive 'saveONenergy' discount coupons to be redeemed on a variety of energy efficient products at major retail outlets. Discounted products include qualified ceiling fans, compact fluorescent light bulbs, and programmable thermostats.
Heating & Cooling Incentive: Customers looking to replace their heating or cooling units this year will receive up to $650 when upgrading to an ENERGY STAR qualified heating and cooling systems.
Fridge & Freezer Pickup: A second fridge or freezer wastes electricity and can add up to $125 a year on a residential bill. With the Fridge and Freezer Pickup program, customers can remove these old and inefficient appliances with one phone call. New this year: once the appointment is booked to haul away a fridge or freezer, customers can also ditch that old room air conditioner and/or dehumidifier!
For details on these and other programs, visit: www.torontohydro.com/conservation
EXPANDED PROGRAMS FOR COMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL CUSTOMERS:
Audit Funding: Incentives are available to conduct energy studies of medium and large size facilities. The Audit Funding incentive can cover up to 50 of the cost of an energy audit, based on requirements that take into account the size and complexity of the buildings. A comprehensive evaluation of a building's energy performance will determine opportunities for improvement. These options for maximizing energy savings will form the basis of an action plan and help to identify opportunities with other programs, such as the Retrofit Program.
Retrofit Program: This program offers incentives of up to 50 of project costs for pre-approved retrofits for commercial, industrial, governmental, social housing and municipal facilities. Financial incentives are available for replacing inefficient existing equipment with high efficiency equipment that will reduce the demand for electricity and improve the efficiency of operational procedures and processes.
Small Business Lighting: This program offers eligible small businesses up to $1,000 in energy-efficient upgrades. Energy efficient upgrades can go a long way toward reducing electricity consumption and managing monthly electricity costs.
Business customers can obtain more information online at: www.torontohydro.com/business
Canada Net-Zero Electricity Buildout will double or triple power capacity, scaling clean energy, renewables, nuclear, hydro, and grid transmission, with faster permitting, Indigenous consultation, and trillions in investment to meet 2035 non-emitting regulations.
Key Points
A national plan to rapidly expand clean, non-emitting power and grid capacity to enable a net-zero economy by 2050.
✅ Double to triple generation; all sources non-emitting by 2035
✅ Accelerate permitting, transmission, and Indigenous partnerships
✅ Trillions in investment; cross-jurisdictional coordination
Canada must build more electricity generation in the next 25 years than it has over the last century in order to support a net-zero emissions economy by 2050, says a new report from the Public Policy Forum.
Reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and shifting to emissions-free electricity, as provinces such as Ontario pursue new wind and solar to ease a supply crunch, to propel our cars, heat our homes and run our factories will require doubling — possibly tripling — the amount of power we make now, the federal government estimates.
"Imagine every dam, turbine, nuclear plant and solar panel across Canada and then picture a couple more next to them," said the report, which will be published Wednesday.
It's going to cost a lot, and in Ontario, greening the grid could cost $400 billion according to one report. Most estimates are in the trillions.
It's also going to require the kind of cross-jurisdictional co-operation, with lessons from Europe's power crisis underscoring the stakes, Indigenous consultation and swift decision-making and construction that Canada just isn't very good at, the report said.
"We have a date with destiny," said Edward Greenspon, president of the Public Policy Forum. "We need to build, build, build. We're way behind where we need to be and we don't have a lot of a lot of time remaining."
Later this summer, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault will publish new regulations to require that all power be generated from non-emitting sources by 2035 clean electricity goals, as proposed.
Greenspon said that means there are two major challenges ahead: massively expanding how much power we make and making all of it clean, even though some natural gas generation will be permitted under federal rules.
On average, it takes more than four years just to get a new electricity generating project approved by Ottawa, and more than three years for new transmission lines.
That's before a single shovel touches any dirt.
Building these facilities is another thing, and provinces such as Ontario face looming electricity shortfalls as projects drag on. The Site C dam in British Columbia won't come on line until 2025 and has been under construction since 2015. A new transmission line from northern Manitoba to the south took more than 11 years from the first proposal to operation.
"We need to move very quickly, and probably with a different approach ... no hurdles, no timeouts," Greenspon said.
There are significant unanswered questions about the new power mix, and the pace at which Canada moves away from fossil fuel power is one of the biggest political issues facing the country, with debates over whether scrapping coal-fired electricity is cost-effective still unresolved.
ITER Nuclear Fusion advances tokamak magnetic confinement, heating deuterium-tritium plasma with superconducting magnets, targeting net energy gain, tritium breeding, and steam-turbine power, while complementing laser inertial confinement milestones for grid-scale electricity and 2025 startup goals.
Key Points
ITER Nuclear Fusion is a tokamak project confining D-T plasma with magnets to achieve net energy gain and clean power.
✅ Tokamak magnetic confinement with high-temp superconducting coils
✅ Deuterium-tritium fuel cycle with on-site tritium breeding
✅ Targets net energy gain and grid-scale, low-carbon electricity
It sounds like the stuff of dreams: a virtually limitless source of energy that doesn’t produce greenhouse gases or radioactive waste. That’s the promise of nuclear fusion, often described as the holy grail of clean energy by proponents, which for decades has been nothing more than a fantasy due to insurmountable technical challenges. But things are heating up in what has turned into a race to create what amounts to an artificial sun here on Earth, one that can provide power for our kettles, cars and light bulbs.
Today’s nuclear power plants create electricity through nuclear fission, in which atoms are split, with next-gen nuclear power exploring smaller, cheaper, safer designs that remain distinct from fusion. Nuclear fusion however, involves combining atomic nuclei to release energy. It’s the same reaction that’s taking place at the Sun’s core. But overcoming the natural repulsion between atomic nuclei and maintaining the right conditions for fusion to occur isn’t straightforward. And doing so in a way that produces more energy than the reaction consumes has been beyond the grasp of the finest minds in physics for decades.
But perhaps not for much longer. Some major technical challenges have been overcome in the past few years and governments around the world have been pouring money into fusion power research as part of a broader green industrial revolution under way in several regions. There are also over 20 private ventures in the UK, US, Europe, China and Australia vying to be the first to make fusion energy production a reality.
“People are saying, ‘If it really is the ultimate solution, let’s find out whether it works or not,’” says Dr Tim Luce, head of science and operation at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), being built in southeast France. ITER is the biggest throw of the fusion dice yet.
Its $22bn (£15.9bn) build cost is being met by the governments of two-thirds of the world’s population, including the EU, the US, China and Russia, at a time when Europe is losing nuclear power and needs energy, and when it’s fired up in 2025 it’ll be the world’s largest fusion reactor. If it works, ITER will transform fusion power from being the stuff of dreams into a viable energy source.
Constructing a nuclear fusion reactor ITER will be a tokamak reactor – thought to be the best hope for fusion power. Inside a tokamak, a gas, often a hydrogen isotope called deuterium, is subjected to intense heat and pressure, forcing electrons out of the atoms. This creates a plasma – a superheated, ionised gas – that has to be contained by intense magnetic fields.
The containment is vital, as no material on Earth could withstand the intense heat (100,000,000°C and above) that the plasma has to reach so that fusion can begin. It’s close to 10 times the heat at the Sun’s core, and temperatures like that are needed in a tokamak because the gravitational pressure within the Sun can’t be recreated.
When atomic nuclei do start to fuse, vast amounts of energy are released. While the experimental reactors currently in operation release that energy as heat, in a fusion reactor power plant, the heat would be used to produce steam that would drive turbines to generate electricity, even as some envision nuclear beyond electricity for industrial heat and fuels.
Tokamaks aren’t the only fusion reactors being tried. Another type of reactor uses lasers to heat and compress a hydrogen fuel to initiate fusion. In August 2021, one such device at the National Ignition Facility, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, generated 1.35 megajoules of energy. This record-breaking figure brings fusion power a step closer to net energy gain, but most hopes are still pinned on tokamak reactors rather than lasers.
In June 2021, China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reactor maintained a plasma for 101 seconds at 120,000,000°C. Before that, the record was 20 seconds. Ultimately, a fusion reactor would need to sustain the plasma indefinitely – or at least for eight-hour ‘pulses’ during periods of peak electricity demand.
A real game-changer for tokamaks has been the magnets used to produce the magnetic field. “We know how to make magnets that generate a very high magnetic field from copper or other kinds of metal, but you would pay a fortune for the electricity. It wouldn’t be a net energy gain from the plant,” says Luce.
One route for nuclear fusion is to use atoms of deuterium and tritium, both isotopes of hydrogen. They fuse under incredible heat and pressure, and the resulting products release energy as heat
The solution is to use high-temperature, superconducting magnets made from superconducting wire, or ‘tape’, that has no electrical resistance. These magnets can create intense magnetic fields and don’t lose energy as heat.
“High temperature superconductivity has been known about for 35 years. But the manufacturing capability to make tape in the lengths that would be required to make a reasonable fusion coil has just recently been developed,” says Luce. One of ITER’s magnets, the central solenoid, will produce a field of 13 tesla – 280,000 times Earth’s magnetic field.
The inner walls of ITER’s vacuum vessel, where the fusion will occur, will be lined with beryllium, a metal that won’t contaminate the plasma much if they touch. At the bottom is the divertor that will keep the temperature inside the reactor under control.
“The heat load on the divertor can be as large as in a rocket nozzle,” says Luce. “Rocket nozzles work because you can get into orbit within minutes and in space it’s really cold.” In a fusion reactor, a divertor would need to withstand this heat indefinitely and at ITER they’ll be testing one made out of tungsten.
Meanwhile, in the US, the National Spherical Torus Experiment – Upgrade (NSTX-U) fusion reactor will be fired up in the autumn of 2022, while efforts in advanced fission such as a mini-reactor design are also progressing. One of its priorities will be to see whether lining the reactor with lithium helps to keep the plasma stable.
Choosing a fuel Instead of just using deuterium as the fusion fuel, ITER will use deuterium mixed with tritium, another hydrogen isotope. The deuterium-tritium blend offers the best chance of getting significantly more power out than is put in. Proponents of fusion power say one reason the technology is safe is that the fuel needs to be constantly fed into the reactor to keep fusion happening, making a runaway reaction impossible.
Deuterium can be extracted from seawater, so there’s a virtually limitless supply of it. But only 20kg of tritium are thought to exist worldwide, so fusion power plants will have to produce it (ITER will develop technology to ‘breed’ tritium). While some radioactive waste will be produced in a fusion plant, it’ll have a lifetime of around 100 years, rather than the thousands of years from fission.
At the time of writing in September, researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor in Oxfordshire were due to start their deuterium-tritium fusion reactions. “JET will help ITER prepare a choice of machine parameters to optimise the fusion power,” says Dr Joelle Mailloux, one of the scientific programme leaders at JET. These parameters will include finding the best combination of deuterium and tritium, and establishing how the current is increased in the magnets before fusion starts.
The groundwork laid down at JET should accelerate ITER’s efforts to accomplish net energy gain. ITER will produce ‘first plasma’ in December 2025 and be cranked up to full power over the following decade. Its plasma temperature will reach 150,000,000°C and its target is to produce 500 megawatts of fusion power for every 50 megawatts of input heating power.
“If ITER is successful, it’ll eliminate most, if not all, doubts about the science and liberate money for technology development,” says Luce. That technology development will be demonstration fusion power plants that actually produce electricity, where advanced reactors can build on decades of expertise. “ITER is opening the door and saying, yeah, this works – the science is there.”
Toronto Electricity Demand Growth underscores IESO projections of rising peak load by 2050, driven by population growth, electrification, new housing density, and tech economy, requiring grid modernization, transmission upgrades, demand response, and local renewable energy.
Key Points
It refers to the projected near-doubling of Toronto's peak load by 2050, driven by electrification and urban growth.
✅ IESO projects peak demand nearly doubling by 2050
Toronto faces a significant challenge in meeting the growing electricity needs of its expanding population and ambitious development plans. According to a new report from Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), Toronto's peak electricity demand is expected to nearly double by 2050. This highlights the need for proactive steps to secure adequate electricity supply amidst the city's ongoing economic and population growth.
Key Factors Driving Demand
Several factors are contributing to the projected increase in electricity demand:
Population Growth: Toronto is one of the fastest-growing cities in North America, and this trend is expected to continue. More residents mean more need for housing, businesses, and other electricity-consuming infrastructure.
New Homes and Density: The city's housing strategy calls for 285,000 new homes within the next decade, including significant densification in existing neighbourhoods. High-rise buildings in urban centers are generally more energy-intensive than low-rise residential developments.
Economic Development: Toronto's robust economy, a hub for tech and innovation, attracts new businesses, including energy-intensive AI data centers that fuel further demand for electricity.
Electrification: The push to reduce carbon emissions is driving the electrification of transportation and home heating, further increasing pressure on Toronto's electricity grid.
Planning for the Future
Ontario and the City of Toronto recognize the urgency to secure stable and reliable electricity supplies to support continued growth and prosperity without sacrificing affordability, drawing lessons from British Columbia's clean energy shift to inform local approaches. Officials are collaborating to develop a long-term plan that focuses on:
Energy Efficiency: Efforts aim to reduce wasteful electricity usage through upgrades to existing buildings, promoting energy-efficient appliances, and implementing smart grid technologies. These will play a crucial role in curbing overall demand.
New Infrastructure: Significant investments in building new electricity generation, transmission lines, and substations, as well as regional macrogrids to enhance reliability, will be necessary to meet the projected demands of Toronto's future.
Demand Management: Programs incentivizing energy conservation during peak hours will help to avoid strain on the grid and reduce the need to build expensive power plants only used at peak demand times.
Challenges Ahead
The path ahead isn't without its hurdles. Building new power infrastructure in a dense urban environment like Toronto can be time-consuming, expensive, and sometimes disruptive, especially as grids face harsh weather risks that complicate construction and operations. Residents and businesses might worry about potential rate increases required to fund these necessary investments.
Opportunity for Innovation
The IESO and the city view the situation as an opportunity to embrace innovative solutions. Exploring renewable energy sources within and near the city, developing local energy storage systems, and promoting distributed energy generation such as rooftop solar, where power is created near the point of use, are all vital strategies for meeting needs in a sustainable way.
Toronto's electricity future depends heavily on proactive planning and investment in modernizing its power infrastructure. The decisions made now will determine whether the city can support economic growth, address climate goals and a net-zero grid by 2050 ambition, and ensure that lights stay on for all Torontonians as the city continues to expand.
Foote Creek I Wind Farm Repowering upgrades Wyoming turbines with new nacelles, towers, and blades, cutting 68 units to 12 while sustaining 41.6 MW, under PacifiCorp and Rocky Mountain Power's Energy Vision 2020 plan.
Key Points
Replacement at Foote Creek Rim I, cutting to 12 turbines while sustaining about 41.6 MW using modern 2-4.2 MW units.
✅ 12 turbines replace 68, output steady near 41.6 MW
✅ New nacelles, towers, blades; taller 500 ft turbines
✅ Part of PacifiCorp Energy Vision 2020 and Gateway West
A Wyoming utility company has filed a permit to replace its first wind farm—originally commissioned in 1998, composed of over 65 turbines—amid new gas capacity competing with nuclear in Ohio, located at Foote Creek Rim I. The replacement would downsize the number of turbines to 12, which would still generate roughly the same energy output.
According to the Star Tribune, PacifiCorp’s new installation would involve new nacelles, new towers and new blades. The permit was filed with Carbon County.
New WY Wind Farm
The replacement wind turbines will stand more than twice as tall as the old: Those currently installed stand 200 feet tall, whereas their replacements will tower closer to 500 feet. Though this move is part of the company’s overall plan to expand its state wind fleet as some utilities respond to declining coal returns in the Midwest, the work going into the Foote Creek site is somewhat special, noted David Eskelsen, spokesperson for Rocky Mountain Power, the western arm of PacifiCorp.
“Foote Creek I repowering is somewhat different from the repowering projects announced in the (Energy Vision) 2020 initiative,” he said. “Foote Creek is a complete replacement of the existing 68 foundations, towers, turbine nacelles and rotors (blades).”
Currently, the turbines at Foote Creek have 600 kilowatts capacity each; the replacements’ maximum production ranges from 2 megawatts to 4.2 megawatts each, with the total output remaining steady at 41.4 megawatts, a scale similar to a 30-megawatt wind expansion in Eastern Kings, though there will be a slight capacity increase to 41.6 megawatts, according to the Star Tribune.
As part of the wind farm repowering initiative, PacifiCorp is to become full owner and operator of the Foote Creek site. When the farm was originally built, an Oregon-based water and electric board was 21 percent owner; 37 percent of the project’s output was tied into a contract with the Bonneville Power Administration.
Otherwise, PacifiCorp is moving to further expand its state wind fleet in line with initiatives like doubling renewable electricity by 2030 in Saskatchewan, with the addition of three new wind farms—to be located in Carbon, Albany and Converse counties—which may add up to 1,150 megawatts of power.
According to PacifiCorp, the company has more than 1,000 megawatts of owned wind generation capability, along with long-term purchase agreements for more than 600 megawatts from other wind farms owned by other entities. Energy Vision 2020 refers to a $3.5 billion investment and company move that is looking to upgrade the company's existing wind fleet with newer technology, adding 1,150 megawatts of new wind resources by 2020 and a a new 140-mile Gateway West transmission segment in Wyoming, comparable to a transmission project in Missouri just energized.
Site C Dam Controversy highlights Peace River risks, BC Hydro claims, Indigenous rights under Treaty 8, environmental assessment findings, and potential impacts to agriculture and the Peace-Athabasca Delta across Alberta and the Northwest Territories.
Key Points
Debate over BC Hydro's Site C dam: clean energy vs Indigenous rights, Peace-Athabasca Delta impacts, and agriculture.
✅ Potential drying of Peace-Athabasca Delta and wildlife habitat
✅ Treaty 8 rights and First Nations legal challenges
✅ Loss of prime Peace Valley farmland; alternatives in renewables
One of the leading opponents of the Site C dam in northeastern B.C. is sharing her concerns with northerners this week.
Proponents of the Site C dam say it will be a cost-effective source of clean electricity, even as a major Alberta wind farm was scrapped elsewhere in Canada, and that it will be able to produce enough energy to power the equivalent of 450,000 homes per year in B.C. But a number of Indigenous groups and environmentalists are against the project.
Wendy Holm is an economist and agronomist who did an environmental assessment of the dam focusing on its potential impacts on agriculture.
On Tuesday she spoke at a town hall presentation in Fort Smith, N.W.T., organized by the Slave River Coalition. She is also speaking at an event in Yellowknife on Friday, as small modular reactors in Yukon receive study as a potential long-term option.
Worried about downstream impacts, Northern leaders urge action on Site C dam
"I learned that people outside of British Columbia are as concerned with this dam as we are," Holm said.
"There's just a lot of concern with what's happening on the Peace River and this dam and the implications for Alberta, where hydro's share has diminished in recent decades, and the Northwest Territories."
If completed, BC Hydro's Site C energy project will be the third dam on the Peace River in northeast B.C. and the largest public works project in B.C. history. The $10.7-billion project was approved by both the provincial and federal governments as B.C. moves to streamline clean energy permitting for future projects.
Amy Lusk, co-ordinator of the Slave River Coalition, said many issues were discussed at the town hall, but she also left with a sense of hope.
"I think sometimes in our little corner of the world, we are up against so much when it comes to industrial development and threats to our water," she said.
"To kind of take away that message of, this is not a done deal, and that we do have a few options in place to try and stop this and not to lose hope, I think was a very important message for the community."
Drying of the Peace-Athabasca Delta
Holm said her main concern for the Northwest Territories is how it could affect the Peace-Athabasca Delta. She said the two dams already on the river are responsible for two-thirds of the drying that's happening in the delta.
"These are very real issues and very present in the minds of northerners who want to stay connected to a traditional lifestyle, want to have access to those wild foods," she said.
Lusk said northerners are fed up with defending waters "time after time after time."
BC Hydro, however, said studies commissioned during the environmental assessment of Site C show the project will have no measurable effect on the delta, which is located 1,100 kilometres away.
Holm said the fight against the Site C dam is also important when it comes to First Nations treaty rights.
The West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations applied for an injunction to halt construction on Site C, as well as a treaty infringement lawsuit against the B.C. government. They argue the dam would cause irreparable harm to their territories and way of life, which are rights protected under Treaty 8.
Agricultural land
While the project is located in B.C., Holm said its impacts on prime horticulture land would also affect northerners, something that's important given issues of food security and nutrition.
"This is some of the best agriculture land in all of Canada," she said of the Peace Valley.
According to BC Hydro, around 2.6 million hectares of land in the Peace agricultural region would remain available for agricultural production while 3,800 hectares would be unavailable. It has also proposed a number of mitigation efforts, including a $20-million agricultural compensation fund.
Holm said renewable energy, including tidal energy for remote communities, will be cheaper and less destructive than the dam, and there's a connection between the dams on the Peace River and water sharing with the U.S.
"When you run out of water there's nothing else you can use. You can't use orange juice to irrigate your fields or to run your industries or to power your homes," she said.
Hydro One Avista Takeover faces Washington UTC scrutiny as regulators deny approval; companies plan a reconsideration petition, citing acquisition terms, governance concerns, merger risks, EPS dilution, and balance sheet impacts across regulated utility operations.
Key Points
A $6.7B bid by Hydro One to buy Avista, denied by Washington UTC on governance risk, under reconsideration petition.
✅ UTC denied over potential provincial interference.
✅ Petition for reconsideration due by Dec. 17.
✅ Deal seen diluting EPS, weakening balance sheet.
Hydro One Ltd. and Avista Corp. say they plan to formally request that the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission reconsider its order last week denying approval of the $6.7-billion takeover, which previously received U.S. antitrust clearance from federal regulators, of the U.S.-based energy utility.
The two companies say they will file a petition no later than Dec. 17 but haven't indicated on what grounds they are making the request, even as investor concerns about Hydro One persist.
Under Washington State law, the UTC has 20 days to consider the petition, otherwise it is deemed to be denied.
If it reconsiders its decision, the UTC can modify the prior order or take any actions it deems appropriate, similar to provincial rulings such as the OEB decision on Hydro One's first combined T&D rates, including extending deliberations.
Washington State regulators said they would not allow Ontario's largest utility to buy Avista for fear the provincial government, which owns 47 per cent of Hydro One's shares and recently prompted a CEO and board exit at the utility, might meddle in Avista's operations.
Hydro One's shares have risen since the order because the deal, announced in July 2017, would have eroded earnings per share and weakened Hydro One's balance sheet, according to analysts, even as the company reported a one-time-boosted Q2 profit earlier this year.
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